It’s 5am on a Sunday and I’m wondering what I’m doing awake. The sun isn’t even up yet; the sky is barely lightening. My husband is snoring peacefully down the hall. I get up early most mornings but I expect to sleep in, at least a little, on the weekends. Not get up even earlier than I do on weekdays. I guess my body is ready for the day, even if my brain isn’t!

I had great success in the spring cleaning of my studio yesterday. It feels so good to have a clean space. Aaaaahhhhh. Today will be more cleaning, but this time in my virtual space. My email inboxes need to be cleaned out. They’ve gotten quite cluttered and when that happens I start to miss important information. For some reason it’s not as satisfying as cleaning in the real world but it must be done.

I thought I’d continue with the “laundry” theme I started in yesterday’s post with this image from Korkula, Croatia. It’s not laundry, actually, but a store display with a laundry. I loved the repetition of these cute, colorful baby shirts against the warm stone. An effective advertisement, don’t you think?

Happy Sunday to you! I’m off to journal and read a bit before the house wakes up. Quiet time is the reward for being up at 5am.

Have you ever looked around and said, “Hmmmm, how did this place get so dirty?” Yeah. That’s my studio. I have all sorts of piles in all sorts of places. They’ve been accumulating for months in some cases and it’s time to dig through and organize them. Shake the dust out of the rugs and clean up the surfaces and generally make things spic and span.

There’s nothing like a clean space to sit and relax in, after all that work is done, don’t you think? I look forward to that feeling later today or tomorrow when this cleaning project is done. This image of a courtyard in Dubrovnik, Croatia gives me a preview of that feeling. I can imagine myself sitting under the umbrella by those potted plants with the scent of sun-drying sheets in the air. Nice.

It seems I’m always looking in. Into windows, courtyards, towns. Capturing the evidence of the lives of people in the places we visit. I love windows like this one from Split, Croatia… so full of plants the shutters won’t close. Full of the day’s laundry drying. Full of texture and rust, of times past caught along with the current moment.

Isn’t that what photography is about? I guess it is, at least from the Kat Eye View!

As I sort through my photos from Nice, I’m seeing a trend. My photos of our short time in Nice are all about color… the blue of the sea, the warm pinks and yellows of the buildings, the green of the palm trees and the plants, the bright colors of the flower market, the shades of the special soaps, the deep blues and bright yellows of Chagall paintings. So many brilliant colors, all in one place! Not gaudy overwhelming color, but natural, like the plumage of a parrot. All tropical and sunny. Maybe it was the sun and the spring feel of the weather that drew me to the colors, but I think maybe it’s just the personality of Nice.

This picture has been popping up in my brain a lot to post, so I figure I just need to get it up here! This is from the back streets of Burano, one of the islands that is part of Venice, my favorite island of the ones I’ve visited. It’s all about the color here. The identical houses are all painted different bright colors, so that the fisherman could find their way home from a distance as they were coming in from the sea.

The color is fantastic. I like this photo because of the way the complementary color scheme just brings the eye right to the focal point of the laundry. It’s a sneak peek into the back streets and the every day lives of the people who live on this little island. I think they actually color coordinate the laundry they hang out, so that it is visually appealing.

I hope to someday see Burano in the sun. My two visits so far have been on overcast days and I just want to see the difference the sun makes. Someday…